A blog sharing information about materials presented to children on climate, highlighting those intended to frighten or mislead, and those which seek to inform and inspire rather than to recruit, even the very young, for an ill-founded political campaign around the threat of CAGW. A campaign which is irresponsible, destructive, divisive, and degrading.

'First, the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are dominant over the climatic effects and are overwhelmingly beneficial. Second, the climatic effects observed in the real world are much less damaging than the effects predicted by the climate models, and have also been frequently beneficial.'

Wednesday, 13 March 2013

Three ways to get at the young about 'climate change'

The determination by some to turn children into true believers in the Faith of Alarm over Climate and Much Else Besides is revealed in many ways. Here are three: get the catechisms into school curricula, design school buildings and grounds to show how serious it is, and have museum exhibits which do much the same.

Each has been illustrated by recent blogposts. I managed to get comments published on two of them..The first is in response to an
article which notes with some enthusiasm an initiative to promote climate alarm in
the curricula of American schools.The
second is in response to a rather wide-eyed article in the New York Times about
‘eco-buildings’ used for schools, a prescription which can mean they become
both more expensive and less useable, but then a little suffering on the part of the pupils can be informative, as one headmaster believed according to one of the examples in my comment.I
add the third example from an article in which the author is bemused by school
pupils at his museum reporting that they’d had quite enough ‘climate change' in their
education, thank you.My comment, polite
as it was, was not posted.But other critical ones were, and I show extracts from one by ‘TinyCO2’ and one by Barry Woods.

‘Given that the so-called major factor of human-linked CO2
emissions has
continued to grow while global mean temperature has flatlined for some
16 years, why would any State rush to adopt a curriculum that seems to
tell them the two are strongly linked? Children now at school have not
known 'global warming' in their lifetime. Some will have teachers
telling them snow is a thing of the past one year and yet the next few years see that snow appearing all around them. Others will have been
warned about hurricanes becoming fiercer and/or more frequent, and will
be bemused when they study data showing otherwise. Others still will wonder about the polar bears doing relatively well, and the sea level
rises refusing to accelerate, or the Arctic sea ice extent being so
variable that observers thought it might disappear in the 1920s. The
reality is that CO2 has not demonstrated any confirmed weather effects
in recent decades, and those who tried to give it a grand role which it
has never displayed in the past are struggling to save face. Pushing
their dogmas on to children is neither a moral nor a responsible way to
do it. Let the children learn that climate changes - always has and
always will - and that we have been impressive at getting better at
coping with the inevitable variations. Let the children learn that
human activity interacts with the climate system and has clear local effects on climate, and will surely influence global climate. But teach them that it is a tough problem to ascertain those global effects
because they are so small compared to those due to other sources of variation. Let us not frighten children because some want to raise
generations of 'little political activists' driven by fear and a lack of confidence in humanity.’

My comment consisted mainly of suggestions for a
not-at-all-alarming exhibit on climate at his museum.It was not published.A couple of gently critical comments by
TinyCo2 and by Barry Woods were however.

TinyCO2 says quite a few things, not all of which I would go
along with.Here are some with which I
would:

‘Climate change is conveyed to the public in such a
simplified form that it is little more than advertising. Catchy phrases,
cartoons, celebrities, exaggerated facts, half truths, these are the ways that governments
and media try to sell AGW to the public. The aim is not to explain climate
science, it is to get a mandate to force people to cut CO2. There is no debate.
You don’t get to use your knowledge of climate to have an opinion. More
detailed knowledge doesn’t make the picture clearer, just the opposite. The
more you know, the more questions arise. So the science never gets beyond the
simple caricature but it appears everywhere. News stories, kids TV, films,
interviews, comedy, you name it climate change creeps into the fabric of
communication. Each message says CO2 bad, the World will end unless the bad men
stop polluting.’

Barry Woods quotes from a psychotherapist, Ro Randall (extract):

‘Should we be working with children about climate change?Climate change community groups often want to work with children. ‘We must
get into the schools,’ says someone and there is a nod of agreement. It’s worth
thinking about the psychology behind this. Why is this idea so appealing? And
why is it so damaging?’

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Observed and Expected Temperatures

Scafetta Model
This displays a forecast made by Scafetta using a simple model combining various cycles which have been observed in temperatures, together with some 'adjustment for global warming'. His forecast has the light blue background. An IPCC 2007 'projection' is shown with a green background. The bold red-then-blue line is the HadCRUT calculation of a global mean temperature, with blue line connecting the most recent results. (Source: Tallbloke's blog). A 2016 paper by Scafetta: http://www.iieta.org/sites/default/files/Journals/HTECH/IJHT.34.S2_35.pdf